Life in and around Hell’s Kitchen, NYC
At the Little Pie Company:
Citibike has really taken off in the area. Walking past the docks most hours of the day they’re completely empty, aside from one or two “out of order” bikes. Turns out today’s rain was the secret to getting one:
I guess the rain makes it harder to hold your latte.
(Jokes aside, we think Citibike’s great.)
Local favorite Schmackary’s are partnering with the InterContinental to host a free kids cookie decorating event tomorrow afternoon.
The hour-long event starts at 2pm at the InterContinental Times Square on W 44th St. RSVP to ictsqsales@ihg.com if you’re interested in joining in. It’s Schmackary’s, so you know it’ll be good!
Madison Square Garden could be forced to move in 10 years. Here’s some possible new locations.
A developer with a number of Hell’s Kitchen properties reacquired a lot opposite the Javits Center to build (what else?) a hotel.
The 32-story Gotham West, at 45th & 11th, is gearing up to open later this month.
The area around the massive Hudson Yards is approved as a new business improvement district, except for the name.
The long-running “Hell’s Bitchen” column on BrickUnderground is coming to an end.
A building on W 35th St ran into some legal troubles when the owner misspelled the name of his own business.
As promised, we stopped by the Night Out Against Crime at Hell’s Kitchen Park tonight. It was very much a family event, with lots of activities on for children, and free pizza. Dozens of NYPD officers were there, as well as a number of community groups.
Obligatory jumping castle:
Overall a nice community event.
The Columbus branch of the NY public library closed back in June, as reported earlier, while upgrading their HVAC system. The branch wasn’t scheduled to reopen until September, which has been a fairly major inconvenience to regulars. Good news, however, as they’re opening early!
The branch will be open again on Monday (August 12th), ready for all your reading needs.
Well that’s depressing. We’ve just heard that last Wednesday morning (the 31st), two dogs got into an altercation at the dog run in DeWitt Clinton Park, and one of the dogs was killed.
There’s a review on Yelp from someone describing what happened, and it’s a bit horrific. Here’s the nicer first half of it:
As the owners of Cinderella (the 45 pound brownish yellow rescue dog with multiple bald spots) that killed 10 pound Symba at 10:30am 7−31−13, I hope you ensure that this does not happen again.
We weren’t there, so we don’t know for sure what happened, but it sounds like the owners of the small dog that was killed took him into the large dog area instead of the small dog area. The other larger dog is apparently a rescue dog, so might have had some unfortunate behavioral issues. These two issues came together and sadly caused the death.
On 10th Ave:
Back in June, we covered a new gay bar coming soon to 9th Ave. The bar is taking over the location previously occupied by Vintage, which has been closed since April.
The signature Vintage sign is gone:
The same storefront two months ago:
Now that construction is fully ramping up, we should be seeing a lot of progress in the coming weeks.
Tomorrow night, a collection of community groups are running a free “Night Out Against Crime” at Hell’s Kitchen Park.
Here’s the details from the announcement flyer:
Across the country residents are gathering with their local police officers to take back their neighborhoods. Hell’s Kitchen residents and police officers are celebrating this event in Hell’s Kitchen Park. We’ll have games, refreshments and pizza! Crime prevention material will be available. The Midtown Community Court will be on hand to answer your questions and more!
There’s also going to be face painting for children at 5:30pm, as well as a “moonwalk for kids”?
Have a look at the full flyer if you want to see all the details (and don’t mind Comic Sans). We’ll stop by to check it out tomorrow, but it sounds like it’s going to be a pretty big event.
Mamasita, a new Mexican bar and grill, is gearing up to open on 10th Ave. Taking over the store of the former Manhattan Marketplace, the spot between 54th & 55th claims to be “the home of the original 60oz margarita”.
Their menu is online, and has all the staple Mexican dishes. They’re just one block over from the neighborhood favorite El Centro, as well as a handful of other Mexican restaurants and bars, but there’s not really any on 10th Ave near them.
A close-up on that “unique” sign:
Their website is currently blank, so expect to see that come to life as they get closer to launching. And of course, they’re on Seamless.
Here’s the same storefront just over a month ago:
We’ll check back again when they’re open and churning out burritos.
Since the start of this year, graphic designer Jose Guizar has been illustrating windows in intricate detail from all over New York every week in his project Windows of New York.
So far he’s illustrated five windows from around Hell’s Kitchen, which are all equally impressive.
All images by Jose Guizar
347 W 46th St
617 9th Ave
675 9th Ave
461 W 47th St
405 W 44th St
Continue through to the full gallery to continue to be amazed.
Spotted this on 10th Ave at 53rd St. It looks like some kind of bruschetta explosion.
I’m sure they were just looking out for the pigeons.
Another quick reminder – the free Summer Movie Series at the Intrepid continues tonight, with a screening of Harry Potter.
Every movie so far has seen lines stretching far around the neighboring pier, so if you want to get a spot make sure you arrive well in advance of the 7:30pm opening.
To quickly recap, the series kicked off with National Treasure back in June, following up with Jaws, then last week continued with Star Trek during SpaceFest, with two more still to go after tonight’s screening.
